For Once, Rangiku Was Right
by Mrs. HopeEstheim
Summary: Toshiro doesn't quite understand why he feels the way he does when Momo is around. Momo avoids him because she's afraid of hurting him after the whole Aizen affair when she attacked him in the midst of her confusion. Rangiku puts it all together.


Toshiro Hitsugaya didn't know what was going on in that snow white head of his. One minute, he was completely blasting Captain Komamura away with his genius - okay, maybe not _quite_ - when he became totally and utterly derailed; lost his train of thought; stuttered and then finally fell silent, unable to concentrate on what he had been trying to say. His palms started to get sweaty, and his accursed heart acted like it was trying to rip from his chest.

_Why_?

Why was the young shinigami prodigy, captain of the Tenth Division, so totally and completely unhinged?

The slight figure, slowly on the path to a better health, who had just walked by with Izuru Kira. She seemed reluctant, and her eyes still held a measure of that dead look, that nothingness that she had had since Aizen broke both her heart and her will. But still, Toshiro's heart raced when his childhood friend walked by, much more quietly than she had ever been before Aizen's betrayal. Not only did that organ race, but with each rapid beat it was as though liquid pain and anger were shot further into his system, all directed at the ex-captain of the Fifth Division.

"Hitsugaya? Is something the matter?"

Jerking himself back to the present, the young prodigy stuttered a quick and completely bullshit excuse and asked, "Where was I?"

With a glance in the direction that the young captain's eyes were still pulled to, smiled slightly and knowingly, and politely explained to the younger white haired boy just where their conversation had been before the young woman had walked by.

"Come on, Momo," sighed Izuru. He hated to see his old friend in such an emotionless state. "We all care about you. We just want you to go back to the way you were."

The dark haired, smaller girl tilted her gaze to the ground, showing no emotion in her eyes. After a very pregnant pause, she said softly, in a voice that held much less feeling than ever before, "I'm sorry, Izuru."

It was much the same as it had been in the last few weeks. Momo Hinamori said little, and when she did open her mouth, her voice was so soft that the lightest breeze would easily whisk it away and the words formed by her delicate lips were always an apology. She kept her hands clasped often, and she was afraid to even touch her Tobiume after having attacked Captain Hitsugaya in her confused rage. And she could barely be around her childhood friend without wanting to cry, or running off somewhere so she could cry. The guilt flooded her; the guilt at attacking him, at hating him; the disgust she felt with herself for falling so easily for her captain's tricks yet she was even more disgusted with herself when she realized that she'd actually fooled herself into falling in love with him.

Again, the blonde lieutenant beside her sighed. "Don't apologize so much, Momo. None of this is your fault, you know. No one blames you for anything at all, much less all that's happened."

"I do," she managed, still finding the ground interesting. More so now because she felt the nearby reiatsu of her once beloved Shiro-chan. Nowadays, Momo didn't know how to face Toshiro. "I blame myself."

"Stop!" Izuru's voice raised, and it took Momo by surprise. She raised her deadened gaze to meat his own fierce eyes. "Just stop it already, Momo! No one saw through him; no one could have _possibly_ seen through him, not even you, his lieutenant! Don't beat yourself up over this when there wasn't a damn thing you could do! Can't you see that we're all worried about you? Momo!"

"Izuru…" she didn't meet his eyes, turning her own away from him for a moment. It wasn't very often that her friend got this upset with her, and she did realize that he could have a very good reason, but it was still a bit unnerving to her. "I'm…I'm sorry."

And again with the ever-present yet unneeded apologies escaping her gentle lips.

_Why can't I concentrate_?

Toshiro sat at his desk in the Tenth Division's office, head in his hands and thoughts running wild through his head. This time, it was memories of what elder folk would call 'the good ole days', back when they were children.

Back when Toshiro was a child, he recalled as clear as day, he had been taken in by a family of two - Momo and her adoptive grandmother. And perhaps the aversion she had to him now started when she first left to go to the academy. He knew that he'd been unfair, hating the other shinigami because _his_ Momo was leaving to be one of them. Slowly, he built walls around himself, and even though when she came back to visit she always broke them down, Toshiro still tried to hide himself from her. And when he became a captain, it was harder still to find time to reconnect, even if, somewhere deep down, he wanted nothing more than to be close to her again.

Groaning, the boy let his head fall onto his desk. He knew, also, that the whole Aizen incident damaged the relationship that was slowly rebuilding between he and Momo. She hardly trusted herself around him anymore; he could say the same about when he was around her, but he had self control and knew instinctively that there was something that would prevent him from hurting her.

"Why is this affecting me so much?" the young captain's voice took on a nearly whiny quality, a tone he would normally have detested.

"I think the captain is in _love_," a voice said in a sing-song tone from the doorway, and the white haired captain in question looked up at her. Rangiku Matsumoto, his lieutenant, then continued, "You know, Captain, you should really just tell her. It may seem like she's all hung up on Aizen, but I think she's just not seeing the truth of the matter. I don't think she ever really loved him at all."

Toshiro flinched, and then asked in a rude tone that Momo might have scolded him for, had it been before the incident, "Matsumoto, what the _hell_ are you going on about now?"

She smiled knowingly at her captain, not at all phased by his snappish inquiry. "You might be just what she needs to come back to us, Captain."

Staring after his lieutenant in dumbfounded silence, his jaw hanging open, the Tenth Division captain found himself rendered utterly speechless.

"Momo," Rangiku whined, lounging on the couch in the Fifth Division office, where the small raven haired lieutenant was working diligently on paperwork. Perhaps her heart wasn't in it as it might have once been, but she would not abandon her duty for her emotional issues and insecurities. At the call of Rangiku, Momo made a noise showing that she had heard, so the busty redhead continued, "Momo, how do you feel about my captain?"

The girl's pen stopped moving, and Rangiku knew that the question had gotten to the withdrawn, emotionless younger woman.

"Feel about…Captain Hitsugaya?" Momo repeated, laying her pen down and looking at Rangiku curiously. The former grinned inwardly at the slight emotion showed in those dull eyes.

"Yeah. I mean, you guys used to be close, right?" Rangiku pressed, stretching out even farther. "How do you feel about him? Maybe he was your first love, or something? Best friends? Like siblings? Or maybe you had another first love, but then you realized you really loved Captain, or…oh, I'm sorry, Momo. I must be getting carried away. But from how you two used to joke and act, I just always thought it would be cute. The whole childhood friends thing, you know?"

Out of the corner of her eye, the Tenth Division's lieutenant caught a bright flush of color contrasting with the cheeks that had been pale for far too long.

"W-what do you mean, R-Rangiku?"

Momo was stuttering! Rangiku inwardly rejoiced. And she was holding a casual conversation with the normally drunken lieutenant, which was a first since what had happened with Aizen.

"I'm not the only one who thinks you and the captain would be perfect together," Rangiku was cheering inside. Perhaps her ages-old hunch had been right - the girl had never been in love with Aizen at all; she just hadn't been able to accept that she was in love with her childhood friend, her _Shiro-chan_. "I talked about it with Rukia once, and Orihime totally agreed! And Yachiru thinks there would be cute kids if you two got together! I agree, now that I think on it…your hair with the captain's eyes would be so adorable on a little girl!"

"Rangiku!"

The color flooding the pale girl's cheeks could give the ripest red tomato a run for its money. And nothing could have made the moment any better than the door opening just then.

"Matsumoto!" the younger white haired captain exclaimed, "There you are! You do realize you have a week's worth of paperwork to catch up on waiting for you, don't you?"

"Oh, I think I'll be going now, Momo!" Rangiku hopped up like hellhounds were at her heels. "Just think about what I said, though! Bye bye!"

"What she said…? Has she been harassing you today, Momo?" Toshiro turned his attention to the girl who made him feel so strange, and got a shock. He was across the room with one quick flash step, his cool hand feeling her forehead as he asked in a kind of frantic tone, "Are you sick, Momo? Hurt? Do you have a fever? You're so warm!"

"I-I'm fine, Shiro-chan!" she squeaked, and both of them froze at the familiar yet slightly disused nickname. And even as the young captain looked at her, his hand falling slightly, the life seemed to come back into her eyes. These aforementioned eyes widened slightly, and the red across her cheeks got darker.

_**Rangiku was right…!**_ Momo thought with a hot flush running through her. Her cheeks, she knew, were a bright red already, and her heart began to flutter haphazardly in her chest. The hand that still rested atop her discarded pen began to feel oddly moist, and she asked herself, _am I sweating_? to which she also had to answer herself, _yes, I am_. To think that Rangiku's words had affected her so! Made her realize that her affections for Sosuke Aizen had been just a passing phase, a time when she was lying to herself about who she was really, really in love with.

The silence between the two stretched on, Toshiro's hand still lightly resting on Momo's cheek over her desk, and they were staring at each other in shock. Momo in shock at the realization that Rangiku Matsumoto, of all people, was right about her feelings. Toshiro was in shock that not only did Momo acknowledge him, she reverted back to her childish nickname - and he didn't even have the heart to correct her with his title as he normally would have done, prior to any of this.

After the very deafening silence, Toshiro finally realized something. Momo wasn't feverish; she was blushing! Normally, it wouldn't be something that he would have noticed, but if it's Momo, it's hard for him to ignore anything and she just didn't look ill. His cheeks were dusted a light pink, but he knew why he was always so nervous around her now. Rangiku's words had helped him figure it out.

"Momo…" the first words said in over a minute came softly from Toshiro, and the hand still touching her cheek was adjusted into a sort of caressing contact. Taking matters into his own hands, the pink dust across his cheeks becoming a red desert, the white haired captain leaned across the desk between them to capture his bed wetter's lips with his own. With barely a second's hesitation, her cool hand found a place on top of his upon her cheek, and the timid girl shyly returned the gesture.

"For once," Toshiro said softly once they broke the kiss, "Rangiku was right about something."

Momo's flushed features were just too cute, Toshiro couldn't help but think as she said, "I was actually about to say the same thing."

Toshiro leaned back over the minimal gap again, and Momo met him halfway.


End file.
